CXLI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
[Edinburgh], Sunday night, 9 o’clock, September 10, 1803.
My dearest Southey,—I arrived here half an hour ago, and have only read your letters—scarce read them.—O dear friend! it is idle to talk of what I feel—I am stunned at present by this beginning to write, making a beginning of living feeling within me. Whatever comfort I can be to you I will—I have no aversions, no dislikes that interfere with you—whatever is necessary or proper for you becomes ipso facto agreeable to me. I will not stay a day in Edinburgh—or only one to hunt out my clothes. I cannot chitchat with Scotchmen while you are at Keswick, childless![283] Bless you, my dear Southey! I will knit myself far closer to you than I have hitherto done, and my children shall be yours till it please God to send you another.
I have been a wild journey, taken up for a spy and clapped into Fort Augustus, and I am afraid they may [have] frightened poor Sara by sending her off a scrap of a letter I was writing to her. I have walked 263 miles in eight days, so I must have strength somewhere, but my spirits are dreadful, owing entirely to the horrors of every night—I truly dread to sleep. It is no shadow with me, but substantial misery foot-thick, that makes me sit by my bedside of a morning and cry.—I have abandoned all opiates, except ether be one.... And when you see me drink a glass of spirit-and-water, except by prescription of a physician, you shall despise me,—but still I cannot get quiet rest.
When on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,5
In humble trust my eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceiv’d, no thought exprest,
Only a Sense of supplication,
A Sense o’er all my soul imprest10
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since round me, in me, everywhere
Eternal strength and Goodness are!—
But yester-night I pray’d aloud
In anguish and in agony,15
Awaking from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortur’d me!
Desire with loathing strangely mixt,
On wild or hateful objects fixt.
Sense of revenge, the powerless will,20
Still baffled and consuming still;
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And men whom I despis’d made strong!
Vain glorious threats, unmanly vaunting,
Bad men my boasts and fury taunting;25
Rage, sensual passion, mad’ning Brawl,
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid that were not hid,
Which all confus’d I might not know,
Whether I suffer’d or I did:30
For all was Horror, Guilt, and Woe,
My own or others still the same,
Life-stifling Fear, soul-stifling Shame!
Thus two nights pass’d: the night’s dismay
Sadden’d and stunn’d the boding day.35
I fear’d to sleep: Sleep seemed to be
Disease’s worst malignity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had freed me from the fiendish dream,
O’ercome by sufferings dark and wild,40
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by Tears subdued
My Trouble to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I thought, were due
To Natures, deepliest stain’d with Sin;45
Still to be stirring up anew
The self-created Hell within,
The Horror of the crimes to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish to do!
With such let fiends make mockery—50
But I—Oh, wherefore this on me?
Frail is my soul, yea, strengthless wholly,
Unequal, restless, melancholy;
But free from Hate and sensual Folly!
To live belov’d is all I need,55
And whom I love, I love indeed,
And etc., etc., etc., etc.[284]
I do not know how I came to scribble down these verses to you—my heart was aching, my head all confused—but they are, doggerel as they may be, a true portrait of my nights. What to do, I am at a loss; for it is hard thus to be withered, having the faculties and attainments which I have. We will soon meet, and I will do all I can to console poor Edith.—O dear, dear Southey! my head is sadly confused. After a rapid walk of thirty-three miles your letters have had the effect of perfect intoxication in my head and eyes. Change! change! change! O God of Eternity! When shall we be at rest in thee?
S. T. Coleridge.